The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump’s personal lawyer punches back at Comey
Calls ‘leaks’ part of effort to undermine admininstration.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer castigated former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday, accusing him of being a “leaker” and suggesting he could be investigated for releasing accounts of his private conversations with Trump.
Trump’s Twitter account remained silent during Comey’s widely televised Senate testimony, an unusually quiet moment for a president with a track record of hitting back hard against criticism.
But within two hours after Comey finished speaking, Trump’s attorney, Marc Kasowitz, launched into counter-accusations. He took aim at Comey’s disclosures and attempted to link him with federal officials who over the last several months have provided reporters with details from inside the FBI and intelligence community’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
“Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president,” Kasowitz said, speaking to reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.
Kasowitz did not say what privilege the disclosures might have violated. Comey made a point of noting in his testimony that the memos were not classified, and the White House has not claimed executive privilege shields the conversations.
In stark contrast to several Republican senators who praised Comey’s credibility during the hearing Thursday, Kasowitz suggested Comey was part of a campaign by federal officials to undermine Trump’s administration by leaking negative stories to the press.
“It is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications,” Kasowitz said.
“Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers,” he said.
Despite calling Comey untruthful, Kasowitz also said Trump felt “completely vindicated” by Comey’s testimony that the president was not being investigated personally for colluding with Russian officials during the 2016 elections.
He also lauded Comey’s statement that there was no evidence votes in the election had been changed as a result of Russian interference.
Comey captivated view- ers for most of the morning with detailed descriptions of his private conversations with Trump, during which, he said, he felt Trump had directed him to drop the FBI investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey said he decided to document his interactions with Trump in memos because he was worried Trump later would lie about their meetings. “My judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” Comey testified.
The friend, who was later identified as Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, read part of the memo to a reporter from The New York Times, according to the newspaper. The paper reported Trump had asked Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Experts debated the legality of Comey’s secret back channel. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, suggested it was at minimum unprofessional and possibly unethical or even illegal.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, disagreed. It’s hard to view the memo as government property, and it was shared, not lost or stolen, so it would not likely qualify as a crime, he said.
And Comey discussed the contents of the memo in an open congressional hearing, which means the material he shared with his friend would not have been classified, Aftergood said.